Tila was still alive, though she was bent, her hair white, and her face a crumpled mask. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she whispered, and she took Rusel’s hands in her own. ‘There are so few of us left, you know, so few not Shipborn. And he did keep asking for you.’

Rusel pressed her hand, reserved, awkward. He felt out of practice with people, with emotions; before this broken-hearted old woman he felt utterly inadequate.

Diluc himself lay on a bed, covered by a worn blanket. Rusel was shocked by how his brother had imploded with age. And he could see, even through the blanket, the swelling of the stomach tumour that was killing him.

He had thought Diluc was sleeping. But his brother opened one eye. ‘Hello, Rusel,’ he said, his voice a croak. ‘You bastard.’

‘I’m sorry—’

‘You haven’t been here in fifty years.’

‘Not that long.’

‘Fifty years! Fifty years! It’s not as if—’ He broke up in coughing. ‘As if it’s that big a Ship . . .’

They talked, as they had talked before. Diluc told rambling anecdotes about his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all properly genetically selected, all wonderful kids.

Rusel had to tell him of a cull of the Elders.

It had had a variety of causes, according to Doctor Selur, but Andres had sniffed at that. ‘I’ve seen it before. Call it a death wish,’ she had said. ‘You reach an age where your body knows it’s time to die. You accept it. Maybe it’s some kind of neural programming, a comfort as we face the inevitable.’ She cackled; she was ageing too, and was now toothless. ‘The Qax treatments don’t do anything about it. And it carries away more would-be immortals than you’d imagine. Strange, isn’t it? That longevity should turn out to be a matter of the mind as much as the body.’

Rusel had spent some years in faint trepidation, wondering if and when his own dark-seeking mental programming might kick in. But it never did, and he wondered if he had some unsuspected strength - or, perhaps, a deficiency.

Now Diluc grimaced. ‘So even immortals die.’ He reached out his hand. Rusel took it; the bones were frail, the flesh almost vanished. ‘Look after them,’ Diluc said.

‘Who?’

‘Everybody. You know. And look after yourself.’ He looked up at his brother, and Rusel saw pity in his brother’s eyes - pity for him, from a withered, dying man.

He could bear to stay only a few minutes more. He would never see his brother again.